Willow's Epic Adventure
by Doc Drabble
Summary: Because it's about time! May get a little darker than the show, so T just in case.
1. Chapter 1

Night had fallen on Anubis house, but Willow couldn't sleep. She'd tried counting sheep, and when that got boring she'd counted zombie sheep, and eventually it ended up being zombie vampire unicorn pirates that shot rainbow lasers from their eyes, turning their enemies into delicious cakes. Then she got hungry, so she decided to sneak downstairs for a midnight snack.

Rich silence met her as her bare feet padded gently down the stairs and into the kitchen. The lights were out, and the moonlight cast long shadows across the room. She had a bad vibe, but she was really hungry, so she quickly ran to the fridge.

'Ooh, cake!' she exclaimed aloud. There was a clattering from the dining room, and she froze. Who could be snooping around at this kind of time?

'Hello?' she called out. There was no answer, so taking a large slice of cake she cautiously approached the source of the noise. 'Anyone there?'

She didn't notice the figure stepping out of the shadows behind her. A blunt object struck her in the back of the head and she crashed to the floor. Just before she passed out, she noticed something strange. Some of the floorboards were missing...


	2. Chapter 2

The bedroom ceiling swam in and out of focus as Willow struggled back to consciousness. Wait - the bedroom ceiling? Wasn't she just in the dining room?

Could last night have been a dream? She felt the back of her head and found a nasty lump where she had been struck. Definitely not a dream then, so how did she get back to her room?

She sprang out of bed as usual, but immediately had to sit down as a wave of nausea overcame her. As she waited for the world to stop rocking she realised there was an odd smell in the room, one she couldn't quite place.

She went down for breakfast. All seemed normal - Jerome was flirting with Joy, Mara was reading a maths textbook, KT was sulking, Fabien and Patricia were having a hushed conversation in the corner. She decided not to discuss the events of the previous night just yet, as everyone already thought she was crazy.

As lesson time rolled around they left one by one, but Willow stuck around. When the room was empty she checked no-one was coming, then closely inspected the floor. The floorboards looked normal, and she wondered again if she could have imagined everything. But then she noticed that two of the boards had a slightly wider gap between them. It was too slim for her fingers, so she grabbed a knife from the table and slipped it into the crack. As she pressed down on the handle, a section of floorboards lifted up!

Footsteps approached from down the hall, so she quickly dropped the hidden trapdoor. She'd have to wait until everyone was in bed before she could investigate further. She allowed herself a small 'Squee!' as she ran to class - she'd always known something weird was going on at the school, and now she would uncover the truth...


	3. Chapter 3

The history lesson dragged interminably on, Mr Sweet's blathering drone falling on no ears deafer than Willow's. All she could think about was the secret trapdoor and what might lay beneath. A smuggler's den? A dragon's lair? A hobbit hole? Then she started thinking about cupcakes, but pretty soon she was back to wondering about the trapdoor.

Finally the bell rang and everyone filed out. They went for dinner, where Alfie kept going on and on about zombies. Sure, zombies were cool, but the boy was obsessed! He kept making eyes at her across the table, so she busied herself playing with her food. Making a spaghetti fort proved a difficult and thankless task.

'It is ten o' clock precisely,' said Victor when it was. 'You have five minutes precisely, and then I want to hear a pin drop.' Then he dropped a pin, which Willow picked up for him. Rather than thanking her, he growled unpleasantly.

'What a meanie,' frowned Willow to herself, making a show of going to bed but waiting fully dressed under the covers. She gave it twenty minutes, then snuck downstairs.

All was quiet as she entered the dining room. She lifted the trapdoor to reveal inky blackness below. The torch on her phone provided scant illumination, revealing wooden steps leading down. As an afterthought she took a carving knife from the table. Her slim fingers ran over the cool blade as she wondered if she'd have the guts to use it if she had to. Then she took a deep breath and entered the pit, lowering the trap door behind her.


	4. Chapter 4

The phone's torch played over the damp stone walls of the roughly carved corridor below Anubis House. _What is this place?_ wondered Willow as her footsteps echoed around her. Something scurried away from her feet, a rat probably, and she held back a squeal. For the first time she began to feel a little afraid, but she bit her lower lip and told herself to get it together. It was adventure she'd wanted, and it was adventure she was going to get.

The tunnel sloped gradually downwards, clearly extending beyond the perimeter of the house. She kept her ears pricked for anyone coming the other way, ready to turn and flee should her trespass be discovered.

Finally she saw the end of the tunnel, where a solid looking wooden door blocked further progress. It had no handle, only a elaborate swirling symbol carved into the wood. The symbol seemed familiar, as if she had seen it somewhere years before. She racked her brains, trying to remember, but nothing came to her.

'Is that it?' she said aloud, jumping slightly as her voice bounced around the tunnel. She pushed at the door, but it didn't budge. She ran her fingers around the swirls of the symbol, perhaps hoping to find a hidden catch to open the door - nothing.

Then she noticed a small recess in the stone beside her, a circular hole around six inches in diameter and three inches deep. Again she poked and prodded to no avail. Frustrated and out of options, she headed back up the tunnel and back to bed.

The only thing Willow failed to notice was the tiny unblinking eye of a camera set into the stone above the door, recording her every move and relaying it to a screen some thirty feet below.

'Is it her?' asked one of the men watching. He waited anxiously for the response.

'It's her.'


	5. Chapter 5

That night, Willow dreamed she was back in her family home. But everything was wrong - rooms were rearranged, chairs faced cracked walls, bare floorboards lay where thick carpets should have been.

The bell rang for dinner.

She found the dining hall, which was empty, cold and vast. Willow turned her chair to the table and waited, humming an odd song she had picked up from her parents.

A door that shouldn't have been there opened at the end of the hall and her friends from Anubis House entered. Each wore a black blindfold and no expression, and they walked slowly to the table where they sat and waited.

Willow's mother entered the room and set down a large silver platter piled with unappetising cuts of greyish meat. The bell rang again, from somewhere else in the house, and the others groped blindly in front of them, taking the gristly morsels in their hands, shoving them into their mouths, devouring the flesh like wild animals as the greasy juices ran down their chins. Willow shuddered at the grotesque display. As the platter emptied, she saw the swirling pattern from the corridor was etched into the base. What did it all mean?

She looked to her mother, who was no longer her mother at all, but a life-sized doll made in her image. One porcelain arm jerked upwards, pointing at the ceiling, and as she watched the pattern appeared there too, this time in blood that dripped onto the assembled diners. And in the centre of the pattern a single word formed -

PARADISE


	6. Chapter 6

Willow awoke with a start and pulled the quilt cover up over her head, the fabric sticking to the beads of cold sweat on her brow. She had had scary dreams before, but never had one felt so real, or so significant. Even now, in these waking moments where the dream-world's details usually became vague and indistinct, she could clearly recall every detail. The meaning, however, was far from obvious.

Paradise...

She racked her brain. The dream had taken place in her family home, the rooms had seemed larger, she'd sang the strange song she had learned as a young child... Everything pointed towards her childhood, her memories...

Wait! She sprang out of bed and went to her wardrobe. Underneath various blankets and rugs was the large wooden box that contained her memories, things of significance she'd gathered over the years. She rummaged through letters and photographs, souvenirs and trinkets, until she found what she was looking for.

When Willow was seven years old, her grandfather, who she had loved very dearly, had disappeared while flying over a largely uncharted area of the Amazon. Her parents could only assume that he had crashed, and Willow was devastated. Life went on, and for five years they heard nothing. On Willow's twelfth birthday a parcel had arrived in the post, containing an intricately designed wooden puzzle box. The contents, if any, were unknown, as they'd never been able to solve the puzzle. And carved into the base of the box, seemingly in her missing grandfather's hand, were the words 'For Willow - something I picked up in Paradise.'

As she had countless times before, she started to fiddle with the box, running her fingers along the grooves, rotating the corners, pressing on certain points. Suddenly there was a click, and the box fell apart, the separate sections clattering to the floor. Willow gasped.

For in her shaking hands she held a shimmering golden sculpture made from hundreds of intertwined rods; a beautiful three dimensional version of the symbol she had seen on the door and then in her dream.


	7. Chapter 7

Math had never been Willow's forte, and today in particular the equations seemed to swim across the pages, escaping her attention. Her mind, of course, was on the mystery of the tunnel and that morning's discovery of the spiral sculpture. She looked around at her classmates. Why had they all been wearing blindfolds in her dream? Because they were blind to the truth? Should she tell them what was going on, or protect them from it?

Well, she didn't exactly know what was going on herself yet, so she decided to keep it under wraps for the time being. Besides, they were always off doing something or other and then acting all mysterious about it. This was her adventure, and she was determined to see it through.

As soon as everyone was in bed she snuck downstairs, raised the trapdoor and entered the secret tunnel, one hand holding her phone to provide light, the other clutching the golden sculpture, which somehow seemed to provide additional illumination itself. Reaching the door, she placed the sculpture in the roughly cut hole, and found it fitted perfectly. She pushed it into the recess, and there was a loud click as the door unlocked, creaking on its hinges at it swung partly open. She decided to leave the sculpture where it was, in case the door locked behind her.

Her heart in her throat, Willow pushed through the door and found herself in a featureless, low-ceilinged chamber with three identical passages leading out of it. She took a deep breath, picked one at random and started down another long tunnel which gradually curved and continued to slope downwards. Just how big was this place, and how deep did it go?

Her phone beeped loudly, making her jump. The battery was dying! She swore softly. How could she have forgotten to charge it? Seconds later it switched off, and she was plunged into darkness. Thankfully she hadn't come far. She started to feel her way back along the tunnel - then stopped dead.

Heavy footsteps were coming down the tunnel from the chamber. Torchlight played over the walls, and she heard the low mutter of men's voices.

In just a few moments she would be discovered...


	8. Chapter 8

With the footsteps falling ever closer and her escape route cut off, Willow had no choice but to follow the tunnel into blackness. She slipped her shoes off and carried them so she could move soundlessly, then ran, expecting at any moment to hear shouts behind her, to feel a heavy hand clamp down on her shoulder. What had she been thinking, journeying into the unknown? She longed to be back in bed, ignorant to the mysteries below, but at the same time her inner voice, the one that reminded her of her grandfather whispering in her ear all those years ago of adventure and intrigue, tombs and pirate ships, squee'd delightedly through the terror.

She saw a dim light up ahead and made for it, trying to put as much distance between her and whoever was following.

The tunnel broadened before emerging into a long chamber, stone walls lined with large empty cages. A musty, animal smell filled the air. Oil lamps burned away in recesses, the light gleaming off the cage bars in places where rust hadn't consumed them.

'What is this place?' whispered Willow as she padded across the flagstone floor to the far end, where another tunnel led out. This one was shorter than the last, ending after about twenty feet where she was presented with two doors, one open, one closed. Peeking through the open door she saw a small chamber with a strange chair at the centre, and symbols covering the walls around it. She entered and shut the door behind her, sagging with momentary relief.


End file.
